1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a print system, a print server, a control method, and a storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
A program called a bookmarklet can be recorded in a bookmark of a web browser. When a bookmarklet is run, script is downloaded from the website that provides the bookmarklet, and is loaded into the webpage being displayed.
By running a bookmarklet, a user can utilize various functions provided by a website in the webpage being displayed by the web browser. For example, there are bookmarklets which provide functions that freely modify the webpage being displayed. When such a bookmarklet is used, unnecessary parts of the webpage under display are deleted, after which it is possible to print only the necessary parts of the webpage with the print function of the web browser.
The print function of the web browser is implemented by an OS (operating system) function. For example, when a print command is issued in an operative web browser in Windows®, printing data is generated using a printer driver that conforms to the selected printer, and is transmitted to the printer via an OS print spooler.
As a method for transmitting the information of a webpage, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2009-116630 discloses a system in which the display screen of a webpage is captured, and transmitted as image data. Moreover, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-161539 discloses a system in which the HTML and all HTML-related files of a webpage are collectively transferred.
However, as the methods of Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2009-116630 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-161539 cannot be implemented with the standard functions of an ordinary web browser alone, it is necessary to either use a dedicated web browser, or install a dedicated program that is separate from the web browser. As it is necessary to prepare a dedicated web browser or program for each platform, high development costs would be incurred in order to cover all platforms in which a web browser operates. Moreover, with terminals such as mobile terminals that have little memory and low CPU performance, there may be cases where programs other than the web browser are unable to operate.
Now, it is possible to transmit the HTML of a webpage under display to a server with the standard functions of a web browser alone, provided that a bookmarklet is used. By running a bookmarklet, script is downloaded from a server, and is loaded into the webpage being displayed. The HTML is then transmitted to the server according to the script loaded into the webpage.
Depending on the security specifications of the web browser, it may be impossible to access the external files of an image or the like that are referenced in the HTML under display from a script that is loaded into the webpage. In such cases, it is necessary for the server that is receiving the HTML to interpret the HTML, and to acquire the external files that are referenced in the HTML.
External files are files which are referenced in the HTML with descriptions like that given in the following example.                Image file: <IMG src=“http://can.jp/img/img.jpg”>        Stylesheet file: <LINK href=“http://can.jp/css/style.css” rel=“stylesheet” type=“text/css”>        Script file: <script type=“text/javascript” src=“http://can.jp/js/aaa.js”>        
However, there are cases where the server is unable to acquire external files. For example, the server would be unable to acquire external files from a website requiring a cookie held by a web browser when acquiring external files of a webpage of a membership system or the like. Also, the server would be unable to access a cookie held by a web browser from script loaded into the webpage due to the security specifications of the web browser. Accordingly, it would also be impossible to transmit the cookie to the server.
Also, in cases where accessing clients are restricted on the website side by IP address or the like, the server would be unable to acquire external files if access from the server side were not allowed.
There are also cases where the web browser is unable to reacquire externals file that have once been acquired. For example, in the case of a website where an image file being referenced in the HTML is dynamically generated, and can only be returned once, it would be impossible for the web browser to reacquire an image file that had once been acquired. A website which dynamically generates a video image such as a graph based on the latest data would correspond thereto. With such websites, the name of the image file that is referenced in the HTML changes whenever the HTML is acquired, and a file of the same name could not be acquired twice.